Book Image

DIY Microcontroller Projects for Hobbyists

By : Miguel Angel Garcia-Ruiz, Pedro Cesar Santana Mancilla
Book Image

DIY Microcontroller Projects for Hobbyists

By: Miguel Angel Garcia-Ruiz, Pedro Cesar Santana Mancilla

Overview of this book

We live in a world surrounded by electronic devices, and microcontrollers are the brains of these devices. Microcontroller programming is an essential skill in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT), and this book helps you to get up to speed with it by working through projects for designing and developing embedded apps with microcontroller boards. DIY Microcontroller Projects for Hobbyists are filled with microcontroller programming C and C++ language constructs. You'll discover how to use the Blue Pill (containing a type of STM32 microcontroller) and Curiosity Nano (containing a type of PIC microcontroller) boards for executing your projects as PIC is a beginner-level board and STM-32 is an ARM Cortex-based board. Later, you'll explore the fundamentals of digital electronics and microcontroller board programming. The book uses examples such as measuring humidity and temperature in an environment to help you gain hands-on project experience. You'll build on your knowledge as you create IoT projects by applying more complex sensors. Finally, you'll find out how to plan for a microcontroller-based project and troubleshoot it. By the end of this book, you'll have developed a firm foundation in electronics and practical PIC and STM32 microcontroller programming and interfacing, adding valuable skills to your professional portfolio.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Testing the visual alarm

In this section, we will focus on how to test the super-bright LED, as well as how to test the speed of the SOS message shown by the LED.

You can test the super-bright LED to establish whether it works OK with a power supply, as shown in Figure 6.10:

Figure 6.10 – Connecting the super-bright LED to a battery set

Figure 6.10 – Connecting the super-bright LED to a battery set

The following are the steps for connecting everything according to Figure 6.10:

  1. Connect the super-bright LED's anode (its longest leg) to a 1 k ohm resistor.
  2. Connect the resistor to the battery set's positive terminal. The battery set should provide around 3 V (supplied by two AA batteries), which are enough for testing our super-bright LED.
  3. Connect the battery set's negative terminal to the super-bright LED's cathode (its shortest leg).

After connecting everything as per the preceding steps, the LED should glow. If not, check the LED polarity, and whether the batteries...